Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment The license is largely irrelevant (Score 1) 25

Where all these struggling businesses falter is that a third party is offering a better deal around the software. The software is one thing, but deployment, services and support another. Writing an application is step one, but after you need to make sure you are the go to source for all peripheral services. If a third party can do that better than you, you don't have your eyes on the ball. You can close the source, but then you need to contend with forks from the last FOSS version and the big guys pouring money into those. Better be nimble and offer superior services and support. In that case even a big third party can only hope to be on par.

Comment Natural carbon cycle (Score 1) 84

Except coffee is grown and by nature of it being plant based, those coffee grounds are part of the carbon cycle. So the CO2 it releases is just putting back what the coffee shrub took out of the air to grow its seeds. The problem we have is that we are releasing carbon that has been sequestered for millions of years in the form of burning oil. Worrying about organic stuff, that is part of the current natural cycle, is pointing the arrows at the wrong target.

Comment Re:Nah, BSD license is still superior & non-vi (Score 4, Interesting) 128

That USL lawsuit is positively ancient. It commenced in 1992 and was settled in 1994. From that point on BSD was truly free. In 1994 Linux was a toy in comparison to workhorse BSD. BSD could have trounced Linux, but it was severely hampered by it's own culture. It was very much "We are UNIX. We don't need to adapt to your PUNY needs. How dare you suggest we need to change what has worked for decades." So where BSD stagnated on development, Linux picked it up year over year. Early noughties Linux was about on par With BSD and then got hit with a high profile lawsuit itself. The same panic set in, but the community rallied and debunked the attacks by "The SCO Group" (not to be confused with the Santa Cruz Operation). After the copyright spectre was vanquished Linux accelerated even more, while BSD kept being glacial. The rest is, as they say, history.

Comment Re:George Orwell warned us in 1948... (Score 1) 144

The proles aren't tracked. The book makes that clear. The proles are kept in check by feeding them, giving them shelter and keeping them occupied with cheap entertainment and telling them what to think through the media. The proles are too unintelligent and too apathetic to know what is going on.

It is the bureaucracy that is tracked and manipulated and forced to toe the Ingsoc party line. Absolute control of the upper layer of society is enough to control the lower tiers.

Comment Re: There's enough training data (Score 4, Informative) 110

It would be a thing to be exited about, if humans weren't trained in scarcity thinking. A thing only has high value if it isn't abundant. So prices will drop to near zero for everything AIs produce. The same will be true for these things if humans still try to produce them. Ergo, opportunities to make a living will dwindle. Since all our societies work on a form of capitalism, this will lead to high unemployment, the collapse of any social safeguards and a lot of disenfranchised people trying to make it outside of established society. I don't think that the freedom from labor will be seen as an opportunity to restructure society accordingly. I am afraid it will be seen as problem of surplus people.

Comment Re:This is it! The year of the Linux desktop! (Score 1) 285

The difference is that an idiot user doesn't get support from fellow Linux users, the user gets berated. Then two things can happen.

1.) The idiot user flees crying to another system, to be an idiot who does get encouragement from other idiots to be an idiot.

2.) The idiot user cleans up his/her act and stops being an idiot.

In both cases it is problem solved.

Comment Re: Male privilege (Score 1) 345

It doesn't necesarrily get worse, but you need to be open and honest to your closest people. Tell them that you had to learn social interaction and that it doesn't come naturally.

It's what I did and people accept me with the occasional weird now, because they know I make a real effort to fit in.

Occasional contacts with people I don't see regularly tend to go well, as they don't see me often enough to know that I'm off sometimes.

It's still embarrassing to miss a social cue every once in a while though, because that makes you stick out like a sore thumb.

Feelings of isolation will never go away completely, but I combat that rationally. If people ask my boyfriend how I'm doing, that means they care about me. If they care about me, I add something of value to their lives. That makes me part of their group.

Slashdot Top Deals

One half large intestine = 1 Semicolon

Working...